


Under the Chenille Blanket: City College 1937

by FrostyEmma



Series: Under the Chenille Blanket [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Artist Steve Rogers, Bottom Bucky Barnes, Bottom Steve Rogers, Bucky is one lucky fella, Canon Gay Character, Canon Jewish Character, Coming Out, First Time Bottoming, First Time Topping, First time anal, Fluff and Smut, Frottage, Gay Bar, Lapdance, Lucky Bucky, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Semi-Public Sex, Steve is a horndog, Strip Tease, Top Bucky Barnes, Top Steve Rogers, a drunken lapdancing horndog
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-03-24
Packaged: 2018-09-26 18:26:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9915365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrostyEmma/pseuds/FrostyEmma
Summary: “Look, so long as you didn’t do something weird, like grab the book and run screaming from the room…” Bucky must have caught the look on Steve’s face, because his eyes went wide and then it was his turn to throw up his hands. “Oh, come on, Steve. Why would you go and do that?”“I panicked!” Steve’s voice rose to a high pitch as the complete absurdity of the situation somehow got worse and worse. “I had no time to think; I just reacted! What would you expect me to do?”At a summer art class, a misunderstanding leads to friendship with a fellow art student who introduces Steve to the underground Manhattan scene, where guys like Steve and Bucky can go to be themselves. And if dinner, dancing, and a drunken lap dance weren't enough, Steve discovers exactly what he wants Bucky to give him for his birthday.Featuring an exploration of the 1930's gay scene, Steve and Bucky being ridiculously in love, and a whole lot of sweaty smut.





	1. Monster Pies and Promises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Bucky had barely gotten through the door, two cold bottles of Coke and a box of leftover pie slices in his hands, when Steve pounced on him like an eager alley cat on the prowl. Only through quick timing and luck did Bucky not drop the entirety of their dinner to the floor, managing to plunk it down on the kitchen table before he was dragged away to the bedroom._
> 
> _Their clothes were strewn across the floor in seconds, and Steve had already drawn the shades beforehand, and then their hands and mouths were on each other before they had even made it to the bed._

**City College of New York, North Campus - Manhattan**  
**Late June 1937**

He’d never get tired of sketching these buildings, Steve thought as he filled in a couple of shadows. Not in a million years.

His ma had surprised him at the beginning of the month with an early birthday present. She’d been saving up for it all year, she’d said, working as many late nights as she could and pinching every penny. She’d enrolled him in a summer art course at the City College of New York in Manhattan, where maybe - he hoped - he’d be able to sharpen his skills to the point where he might be able to make a real living off of his art. 

Which he’d really need to do, seeing as how no one would hire a scrawny asthmatic with a heart murmur to work the docks or unload boxes off a delivery wagon. And, Steve thought with a wry mental smile, his ma had probably had that in mind when she’d started saving up. 

He’d need to thank her again.

He sat there in the shade of the trees, gazing up in wonder and admiration at the four towers of the magnificent Shepard Hall. It looked for all the world like the soaring Gothic cathedral it had clearly been modeled after, and the intricate stone tracery was both a challenge and a pleasure to draw. There were a few other Gothic-style buildings on the campus, but Shepard was in a class all by itself. It was very rapidly becoming his third-favorite thing in the world to draw.

His second-favorite, obviously, was the Brooklyn Bridge. He’d filled entire sketchbooks with various perspectives and elevations of it, and every so often he’d still think of a new way to draw it. There was just something so inspiring about it, something powerful and dignified that made it the focus of people’s attention. Or at least of Steve’s attention. 

But his favorite thing to draw?

Well, that was Bucky.

Steve smiled as he closed his sketch pad and packed up his things. It would be time to head back home soon, and he’d be in for a doozy of a walk if he missed the bus. Besides, he wanted to get home. His ma was going to work a late shift again, and that meant more time to spend with his fella.

God, he got such a kick out of thinking about Bucky that way.

The walk to the bus stop took him past more buildings he’d marked as sketch-worthy, and he wondered if he might be ready to try actually painting one of them soon. He’d never been that comfortable with a paintbrush - he’d been pretty exclusively a pencil-and-paper artist up until a couple of weeks ago - but the professor had insisted he start. 

He got on the bus and settled in for the long ride back to Brooklyn - an hour and a half, on multiple buses. By the time he got back to Red Hook, he was sticky with sweat. The window on the bus wouldn’t open, and when he stood up, he could feel himself peeling off of the leatherette seat. His shirt, plastered to his back like a second skin, was sodden with sweat, and there was no hint of a cooling breeze in the air.

Mr. Cicalese’s store, at least, provided some shade when he stepped inside. And while there still wasn’t a breeze, there was a large-bladed ceiling fan that sluggishly moved the warm air around the store. Mr.Cicalese himself was on a high stool behind the side counter, doing his books. He looked up a bit blearily as the bell over the door jingled at Steve’s entrance, gave him a grunt and a nod of greeting, and then went back to his figuring. 

Steve raised his own hand in response, then wiped sweat off his forehead and headed back to the stockroom.

Bucky had been working for Mr. Cicalese on and off for a pretty long time, running errands and sweeping up and such when they were much younger, and then stocking shelves and making deliveries more recently. But after they finished high school, Mr. Cicalese had hired Bucky on full-time - as a manager, no less. And on a sweltering day like this, Steve knew the best place to find Bucky would be in the stockroom, where at least it was a bit cooler.

Just as predicted, Bucky was standing in front of a stack of opened boxes, writing something down on a clipboard. He looked up when Steve came in though, his whole face breaking out into a smile.

Steve loved that smile.

“Hey, Stevie.” Bucky looked him up and down and raised an eyebrow. “Just got off the bus?”

“That obvious, huh?” Steve chuckled. Even the chuckle sounded sweaty and exhausted. “It’s an oven out there. I feel like I could fill up a tub with ice and sit down in it, and there’d be nothing but steam in ten seconds.”

Bucky’s smile very quickly turned into a smirk. “Well, maybe we’ll just have to drag the mattress out onto the fire escape tonight. Get some relief.”

“You’re terrible,” Steve laughed, shaking his head. “And here I thought I was supposed to be the one with that on his mind all the time.”

“The one with _what_ on his mind all the time?” An expression of perfect innocence came over Bucky’s face then. “I’m just talking about sleep, buddy. What are you talking about?”

“You know.” Steve grinned saucily and lowered his voice. “That other time we got some relief out on the fire escape.” He took a step closer. “And all those other times we ought to have been sleeping, but we were getting some relief instead. Remember those times?”

Bucky licked his lips, a slow smile spreading across his face. Still, he looked past Steve and into the storefront beyond before moving to close the gap between them.

Always so careful. 

“I remember the relief we were getting a few nights ago,” he murmured into Steve’s ear. “Been on my mind all day actually.”

“Mine too,” Steve murmured back. He closed his eyes and let the memories of it drift through his mind. 

It had been a hot night, like most of the nights recently, and their sweat had slicked them both up until they slid against one another as if they’d been oiled. It had felt amazing, his cock sliding effortlessly against Bucky’s skin, against his throbbing hardness, even between the clenched cheeks of his ass, and they’d both come again and again and again until finally they’d passed out from sheer exhaustion.

“We should do that again sometime,” he whispered in Bucky’s ear, feeling himself grow hard at the thought of it. “Like maybe tonight.”

Again, Bucky glanced over Steve’s shoulder, and then his hand came up and gently brushed a lock of sweaty hair from Steve’s forehead. “I get off in an hour.” He grinned cheekily. “And then you can get me off after that.”

Steve felt his heart leap in his chest and something else leap in his pants as those words made their way into his mind. There was something so invigorating, so energizing and life-affirming about what he and Bucky had created for themselves, together. Something that made him blissfully happy every time he thought of it, no matter what else might have been going on at the time. 

And right then, with Bucky so close and thoughts of their evening set to become a reality in an hour’s time, there was nothing in the world that could knock him down from Cloud Nine.

“I’ll get you off every hour, if you’ll let me.” Steve returned the grin and put his hands on Bucky’s waist. “More, even. If you think you can handle it.”

Bucky ran his thumb over Steve’s lips before letting his hand drop away. “Get some food in me first, and you can get me off all night.” Abruptly he stepped back and sucked in his breath. “Okay, back to work. I’ll bring home some Cokes, and there’s enough leftover pie slices behind the counter to make one monster pie, so long as you don’t mind a variety.”

“How much variety is there going to be, though?” Steve grinned. “I mean, after you get done with it.”

Bucky moved past Steve toward the storefront, pausing only to smack him lightly on the ass with the clipboard. “So long as no one comes in last minute for some pie, there’ll be cherry and lemon meringue and strawberry. I might even let you have a slice, if you’re nice to me.”

\---

Steve was nice to him.

Good Lord, was he nice to him.

Bucky had barely gotten through the door, two cold bottles of Coke and a box of leftover pie slices in his hands, when Steve pounced on him like an eager alley cat on the prowl. Only through quick timing and luck did Bucky not drop the entirety of their dinner to the floor, managing to plunk it down on the kitchen table before he was dragged away to the bedroom.

Their clothes were strewn across the floor in seconds, and Steve had already drawn the shades beforehand, and then their hands and mouths were on each other before they had even made it to the bed.

“Dinner can wait,” Steve muttered breathily in between feverish kisses. “The pie’ll keep. Plenty of time to eat later on.”

“So you’re not going to get food in me first?” Bucky offered no resistance as Steve pushed him down onto the bed and then climbed astride him. “Don’t want to keep me going all night?”

“Oh, I’ll keep you going all night.” Steve gave Bucky a sly grin. “Don’t you worry about that.” He ground his hips against Bucky’s, their cocks pressed achingly together. “And hey, we can always be decadent and eat right after.”

Bucky’s only response was a just barely stifled groan. 

In the still air and damp heat of the room, they worked up a delicious sweat very quickly. Their bodies became slippery with it, sliding effortlessly against each other, and their hair quickly became damp, then soaked. Steve’s hung in his face, lank and limp and constantly having to be pushed aside or brushed over his ear. But Bucky’s curled in the muggy air, and Steve seemed to get lost in winding his fingers into it.

But not too lost to grind his cock hungrily against Bucky’s, every swollen inch throbbing and every vein standing out so Bucky could feel it against his own. Their arms were entwined around each other, their mouths landing hungry kisses on lips and necks and chests.

Bucky ended up on his stomach, Steve sliding his cock maddeningly between the cheeks of his ass and reaching around to wrap his hand around Bucky’s own cock and stroke it, and all Bucky could do was cling desperately to the sheets.

“Stevie.” He moaned the name like a prayer on his lips. “Stevie, Stevie.”

“Shh,” Steve warned him, but he didn’t stop moving either, bringing them closer and closer to the brink. “Not too loud, Buck.”

Between the two of them, Bucky had always been the screamer. 

Steve began to move his hips faster, his slickened cock pumping between the clenched cheeks of Bucky’s ass, hand stroking Bucky’s cock with greater urgency and breath hot in Bucky’s ear as they fucked.

“I’m so close, Bucky,” he whispered, his hand moving faster than ever. “Come for me.”

That was all it took.

Bucky came hard and fast, spilling endlessly into Steve’s hand, stifling his moaning cries into the crumpled chenille blanket. He grasped tightly at the sheets, knuckles white, rivulets of sweat streaming down the sides of his face.

Above him, Steve’s frantic movements ended in one long tensing lunge, and Bucky felt his cock throb and pulse as spurt after spurt of Steve’s jism jetted out between Steve’s taut stomach and Bucky’s lower back. And then they both collapsed, naked and sweaty and sticky and wonderfully spent.

“I love doing this,” Steve panted into Bucky’s ear. “I love _you._ ”

Bucky managed a breathless puff of laughter and an exhausted smile that Steve couldn’t see. He shifted awkwardly around on the mattress until he was on his back and Steve could settle against him, head on Bucky’s shoulder and arms around each other.

“What I wouldn’t give,” Bucky murmured, “for those showers we had back in school.”

Cleaning up, especially in the heat of the summer, was always an ordeal. It was too much of a hassle to pull the cover off the bathtub in the kitchen and fill it just to wash off after sex, but it was a pain to stand at the sink and sponge themselves clean with nothing but a washcloth and cold water.

At least it was summer though, and so the cold water was a welcome relief instead of a frigid ordeal. 

“Ugh,” Steve muttered into Bucky’s shoulder, “don’t remind me.” He paused, then lifted his head and looked Bucky in the eye with a small smile. “I wonder how easy it’d be to just sneak into the school and use the showers at night.”

“That is tempting.” Bucky pursed his lips and pretended to consider the idea. “Until our inevitable arrest, and then there’s that awkward part where we have to explain why we were breaking into our old high school to use the showers.”

“Oh, that’s easy.” Steve grinned. “Showers make us feel cleaner than baths. Any reasonable person would be hard pressed to disagree.”

Bucky snorted. “Very reasonable.” He tousled Steve’s damp hair, then groaned and forced himself to sit up. “All right, you mook, that pie is calling my name and those Cokes are going to be warm if we don’t get to them now.” He pushed off the bed, stood up, and stretched.

Steve watched appreciatively, and so Bucky extended the stretch for just a little bit longer than necessary.

“You know...” Steve toweled some of the sweat and jism off himself with his discarded undershirt. “I think I actually worked up an appetite.” He grinned. “So no eating all the pie yourself this time, you hear?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Bucky walked bare ass naked into the kitchen. Luckily Steve’s ma was not expected home until the next morning. “I’ll save you half a slice of lemon meringue.”

Steve’s favorite.

They washed off slowly, taking advantage of the cold water against their flushed bodies, and then they pulled on their undershorts and shirts and ate their dinner out on the fire escape. 

The rest of the neighborhood had clearly had the same idea. Most of the fire escapes were filled with families, eating their dinners, playing cards, and reading books, all of them outside to escape the muggy June heat.

“Hey, look who it is.” Bucky gestured with his fork. “Jerry’s home.”

Across the courtyard and on a fire escape one story higher sat gorgeous Frannie McDowell and her lunker of a Merchant Marine husband (who was actually a pretty swell guy when all was said and done). They were smoking cigarettes and sharing a bottle of wine, and Frannie was wearing a bright pink robe of shiny silk and draping sleeves.

A gift, Bucky guessed, from her husband. She always seemed to get a new robe in the Oriental style whenever Jerry came home from his travels with the Merchant Marines.

“Yeah.” Steve smiled as he dug into his pie. “You know, ordinarily I’d have said ‘some guys have all the luck’, but I’ve been feeling pretty lucky myself lately.”

“Keep it up.” Bucky took a swig of his Coke. “Maybe you’ll get lucky again.”

Across the way, Frannie caught his eye and blew him a kiss. Jerry winked at him and raised his wineglass, and Bucky saluted with his Coke bottle in return.

“You know, she suggested a threesome once.” Bucky smiled and glanced at Steve. “Me, her, and Jerry. She thought you might like to draw the whole thing.”

“What?” Steve turned to him, his fork halfway to his mouth, a look of indignation on his face. “Oh, come on! All I’d get to do is watch and draw?” He stuffed the forkful of pie into his face, glowering. “Nuts to that.”

Bucky grinned and drained off the last of his Coke. “Yeah, I thought you might say something like that. But for what it’s worth, pal,” he shrugged, the grin lingering on his face, “Jerry might’ve been able to teach me a thing or two, and I’m generous. I’d’ve passed that knowledge right onto my fella.”

“Double nuts.” Steve shook his head. “No way I’d go for you getting all that action and I’d have to wait for the aftermath to get mine.” He seemed to consider a moment, his eyes drifting back up to Frannie and Jerry. “I’d agree to taking turns though.”

“Thought Jerry wasn’t your type?” Bucky said through a mouthful of strawberry pie. “Didn’t want a guy who could break you like a toothpick?”

“I’d probably get you to pinch-hit for him, tell you the truth.” Steve ate another forkful of lemon meringue pie somewhat loudly. “And anyway, who says he could break me like a toothpick? I can hold my own.”

Bucky looked at him. “ _You_ said he could break you like a toothpick, Stevie. You said that.” He shook his head and shoved another forkful of pie into his mouth. “Mouthy punk.”

“What?” Steve’s eyebrows shot up, then lowered into a scowl. “That doesn’t sound like something I’d say. More like you said it.” He shoved another bite of pie home. “Jerk.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Bucky rolled his eyes. “Sing me a different tune, would you?”

Quickly he finished off the last of his strawberry pie, then eyed the pie box critically, deciding between another slice of strawberry or some of the cherry that he hadn’t tried yet. Novelty won the moment, and he lifted the slice of cherry pie onto his plate and immediately forked a piece into his mouth. Wasn’t bad at all.

They ate in silence for a moment or two, then Bucky said, “So I got some food in me. Where’s the part where you get me off all night?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments, questions, feedback, and pie recipes are warmly welcomed, encouraged, and hoped for!


	2. Pansy Craze

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Arnie shrugged. “During the… they called it the ‘Pansy Craze’. They used to have these drag balls right in midtown Manhattan. People couldn’t get enough of them.”_
> 
> _“You mean our kind of people, right?” Steve was having a very hard time wrapping his head around the idea of an entire world that had apparently existed for however long under his nose without his even having the faintest clue it was there at all. “Guys who go with guys?”_

**Red Hook, Brooklyn**  
**Late June 1937**

They really did wind up going at it all night. Well, most of the night, anyway; they finally wound up too exhausted to continue somewhere around midnight. Bucky had complained about being too sore to even get hard again, and while Steve was pretty sore, he couldn’t imagine ever being that sore. 

Not unless he somehow managed to get a sunburn on his cock or something.

Anyway, at some point the wild ride had come to a stop, and Bucky was unmistakably asleep. Steve had to chuckle as he looked over at him - Bucky had a way of throwing himself into sleep with real gusto. He lay on his side, mostly under the blanket, sprawled in what looked like an awkward and uncomfortable position. The kind of position no one would believe unless they saw it.

Or saw a picture of it.

Less than a minute later, Steve was sitting at his drawing table and sketching his favorite subject again. And he had to smile as he drew, because Bucky never seemed to believe him when Steve complained about the odd positions Bucky would sleep in. 

Even when they’d been much younger and shared a bed, Steve would find himself being woken up by elbows in the ribs or knees in the side. Or, occasionally, Bucky’s chin in his eye or all of Bucky’s weight on his chest. And whenever he had tried to berate Bucky for sleeping like a madman, Bucky had just dismissed his descriptions as being farfetched, saying that no one slept like that.

Well, wasn’t he going to be surprised?

Still, Steve thought with a smile as he continued to sketch, the drawing was going to have a very different meaning to him. A much more important meaning. It was the first time he’d ever drawn Bucky asleep after they’d had sex, and because of that, he focused on putting a lot of detail into it. He wanted to capture every part of the moment, every part of the feeling that was possible to capture in a pencil sketch. 

And so he focused on the way Bucky’s hair still held the curls their sweat had brought to it. The way the blanket draped and molded itself to Bucky’s body. The peaceful look on his face that seemed to have a twinge of satisfaction to it - or was that Steve’s imagination bleeding over into his artistic license?

Smiling, he continued to sketch. And when the drawing was perfect, he put his sketchbook away and crawled into bed next to Bucky.

By the time his ma got home in the morning, Bucky was already up and about. Steve had been shaken awake by him at what felt like the crack of dawn to get the house in order and to make sure they’d removed all traces of their sexual escapades. Steve didn’t even want to imagine what would happen if his ma found out, though a big part of him was indignant about having to hide it at all. 

Why should he, after all, when nothing he or Bucky was doing could possibly hurt anyone?

The next couple of days went by in a kind of blur. Bucky was busy at work, and Steve’s ma found plenty to keep Steve busy around the house, and he kept himself busy getting his work ready for class. But on the way across campus to class, Steve ran into something every bit as interesting as art lessons - and possibly way more relevant.

 _The Socialist Party of CCNY_ , the big banner read in large hand-painted letters. Under the banner, which had been strung between two poles, a large group of students had gathered. Some were engaged in what sounded like heated debate, while others were reading leaflets that were being passed around. Steve, intrigued, came a bit closer and put out his hand for a leaflet.

There was plenty in there about wealth and income inequality, about workers’ rights and equitable wages, and also a good deal about the disturbing rise to power of Franco in Spain and Hitler in Germany, which the leaflet described as ‘the rising tidal wave of fascism which threatens to drown the world in blood’. Steve found himself reading thoroughly, and even going back to reread parts, when a sudden voice at his side jarred him out of his thoughts.

“Are you thinking of joining the Socialist Party?”

He looked up into a pale, freckled face behind round glasses, topped by an unruly mop of brown, curly hair. 

“Hiya, Arnie.” Steve smiled as he recognized Arnie Roth, whom he’d gotten to know pretty well over the past couple of weeks in his art class. “I don’t know. From what I’m reading, it doesn’t sound like a bad idea.” He hitched up the strap on his satchel. “Why, are you?”

A strange expression flitted across Arnie’s face. “Maybe. I don’t know.” A beat, then, “The situation in Germany is… Well, it’s something.”

“It’s something, all right.” Steve’s expression darkened. “Something bad. All these guys over there seem to have the same thing in mind - Franco, Mussolini, Hitler - and I don’t really want to think about how bad it could get.”

“No.” Arnie frowned. “No, neither do I.” Another beat, then, “Hey, you want to grab a Coke before class starts? The studio’s always so hot, and I always forget to bring something to drink.”

Between the rally and the Cokes, Steve was surprised they made it into the studio before the start of class. But they did, and it was nice to be able to sip a nice cold drink and chat with Arnie while they both set up their supplies. 

“...and I think I’m finally getting the stonework right when I draw the big window on Wingate Hall,” Steve was saying as he flipped open his sketchbook. “You ever tried to draw it from across the quadrangle? It’s not close enough to make the detail easy, but it’s not far away enough to just fudge it.”

“I feel like I could draw Wingate pretty well. My struggle is people.” Arnie sat back in his chair. “I spent the past few days getting two of my sisters to hold bread and fruit in a couple of different poses, until one of them got frustrated and threw an orange at my head.” He shrugged. “She had good aim, too. Got me right in the forehead.”

“Oof.” Steve winced exaggeratedly. “Makes me glad I mostly just draw still life. Buildings can’t hurl fruit at you when they get impatient.” He chuckled. “Yeah, thankfully my one human subject’s a bit more cooperative than that. Indulgent, even. I’ve been drawing him for years.”

“Lemme guess.” Arnie smiled. “A cooperative younger brother that can be bribed with candy?”

“Not even.” Steve shook his head, still chuckling. “My best friend.”

Though they were so much more than that to each other now, weren’t they?

“And I haven’t had to bribe him in a long time.” He grinned. “Though once I had to promise to draw him in a fancy suit with a classy dame on his arm.”

Arnie twirled a pencil between his fingers. “Well, I’ll trade you Goldie and Hannah for your best friend, and maybe my portraits will look a bit more authentic.”

“Uh-uh. No dice.” Steve shook his head again, emphatically. “If they wing oranges at their own brother’s forehead, I don’t want to think about what they’d do to me.” He gave an exaggerated shudder, then laughed again. “Here, how about taking a look through my sketchbook. Maybe you’ll see something you can use to help you.”

“Sure.” Arnie held out his own sketchbook. “I’ll look at your best friend, you look at my buildings, and we’ll compare notes.”

Steve took the sketchbook from Arnie, laid it out on his table, and was quickly absorbed in the still life drawings. Arnie had an amazing eye for detail, and Steve lost track of time studying his work, until he was jarred out of his concentration by Arnie softly clearing his throat.

“So, uh…” Arnie looked at him, a strange expression on his face. He tapped his fingers along the edge of the sketchbook. “Your… your friend…”

“Yeah?” Steve suddenly felt cautious. “What about him?”

“He’s… he’s a very handsome fella, isn’t he?” There was hesitation on Arnie’s face. Hesitation, and something else that Steve couldn’t quite identify. “Nice cheekbones. You really capture the contours.”

“Uh… thanks.” Steve managed a smile, though he still wasn’t quite sure where this was heading. “Yeah, I’ve had a lot of practice drawing him. Guess it shows, huh?”

Arnie blew out a breath. “It sure shows. You clearly know him very well.”

Other students were beginning to fill the room now, setting up their supplies and chatting amongst themselves. At the front of the room, the professor was talking quietly with a heavyset woman in a bathrobe - that day’s life model.

“Uh…” 

Steve felt a growing sense of unease in the pit of his stomach. Had he let something slip? Was there something in the book he’d forgotten about? He’d never drawn Bucky naked, so that possibility was thankfully out of the question, but what else was there? He racked his brains, trying to think of what could have made Arnie act this way, and came up empty.

“Uh… which one shows it best?” he finally tried, awkwardly.

“I’d say all of them.” Arnie glanced about the room quickly, then looked back at Steve and spoke so quietly, Steve had to strain to hear him. “He’s your fella, isn’t he?”

An icicle of dread pierced Steve’s heart. Out of sheer panic, he reached out and grabbed the sketchbook out of Arnie’s hands. And right there, on the page Arnie had been looking at, was his answer. It was the picture he’d drawn of Bucky the other night, as he lay there asleep. There was nothing explicit or pornographic or even suggestive about the picture itself. Bucky was covered up from the waist down, except for his right leg from mid-calf, which stuck out from under the blankets and hung over the edge of the mattress. The look on his face was calm and peaceful, not lustful. But under the drawing, someone had hastily scrawled a caption that took all the innocence of the picture and turned it on its ear.

_We just fucked._

Steve stared down at the picture in mute horror, then looked over at Arnie Roth with a deepening sense of real panic. If anyone found out…

The panic won out. And before he even knew what was happening, he’d scooped up his things and darted out of the room. He didn’t stop moving until he was on the bus, and it was only then that he realized he was wheezing to beat the band and if he hadn’t sat down when he had, he’d probably have collapsed.

An hour and a half later, the panic still not out of his system, he rushed right past Mr. Cicalese and pushed open the door to the stockroom. Bucky was there, clipboard in hand, looking calm and collected and everything he shouldn’t be at a time like that.

“Bucky, I think we’re in trouble.”

Bucky looked up, glanced at the clock on the wall, and looked back at Steve. “Shouldn’t you be at your class?”

“Forget the class!” Steve’s eyes were wide with fear. “We’re in trouble! Somebody knows about us.”

Several expressions flitted across Bucky’s face in quick succession: shock, panic, confusion. And yet, he still looked past Steve, into the storefront beyond, before replying.

“Who?” He licked his lips. “Who would know? How?”

Steve dug out the sketchbook, flipped through it with a shaking hand, and shoved the sketch at Bucky. “A guy in my class was looking through my drawings, and he found this, and he asked if you were my fella, and I didn’t know what to do, Buck, and now I don’t know how long it’s going to be before everybody knows, and what are we going to do?”

“‘We just fucked’,” Bucky read aloud. “Now why would you go and write something like…” He frowned. “Oh. Yeah, that’s… that’s my handwriting.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Bucky!” Steve dropped the sketchbook, his frustration at an almost absurd level, and flung his hands into the air. “What in the hell were you thinking? Why in God’s name would you do that?”

“I…I dunno, I…” Bucky had the good grace to at least look abashed. “You’re always saying that I sleep like a madman, and here’s this picture, and I just… well.” He put his hands on his hips and stared up at the ceiling. “Well, shit.”

“Oh, come on, Buck!” Steve stared at him in disbelief, not quite being able to wrap his mind around Bucky’s rationale. “Didn’t you ever think about what might happen if anybody saw that?”

“Well, I thought you would see it.” Bucky offered him a wobbly half-smile. “I thought it’d be funny, and then I forgot about it.”

“You…” Steve shook his head, his mouth hanging open. “When did you even do this? And when was I supposed to have seen it?”

Bucky licked his lips. “That morning you were running around, we were cleaning up the house before your ma came home, and I just…” He sighed. “C’mon, Stevie, just go back to class and tell whoever saw the picture that your idiot friend wrote it as some kind of stupid joke. Because he’s an idiot.”

“Yeah, well…” Steve licked his lips and hesitated. “I, uh… I don’t think that’s really going to be an option.”

“Look, so long as you didn’t do something weird, like grab the book and run screaming from the room…” Bucky must have caught the look on Steve’s face, because his eyes went wide and then it was his turn to throw up his hands. “Oh, come on, Steve. Why would you go and do that?”

“I panicked!” Steve’s voice rose to a high pitch as the complete absurdity of the situation somehow got worse and worse. “I had no time to think; I just reacted! What would you expect me to do?”

“Jesus, listen to us.” Bucky reached out suddenly, his hand going to the back of Steve’s head and pulling him in close. “You’re going to have to go out and get yourself a new fella now,” he murmured, lips brushing against Steve’s forehead. “One who’s not such an idiot.”

“Yeah, well, at least you’re an idiot in good company.” Steve snorted as he let himself be hugged. “I’m no genius myself.” He sighed. “So what am I going to do now? I can’t just stop going to class; my ma saved all year for this. I couldn’t do that to her.”

“You can’t do that to _yourself,_ ” Bucky said sharply, stepping back and looking Steve in the eyes. “You’re the only one of us who’s ever going to get this opportunity. You. Just you. I’m not smart enough to go to some big fancy college, and I’d never have the money for it anyway, but you’re getting to take this class, and…” He shook his head. “No, you’re not throwing the whole thing away because some asshole saw my stupid words on a drawing. No way, pal.”

“Aw, come on, Buck.” Steve suddenly felt sheepish. He hated to hear Bucky bash himself, especially in order to try to cast him in a better light. “Don’t say that. Why should I be worth any more than you? If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be half what I am.”

“Stevie.” Bucky put both hands on Steve’s shoulders. “You’re going back to that class. You’re not throwing this away because of one stupid comment on a sketch. Blame me. Tell your friend I’m an idiot. Say whatever you need to say.” A darker expression flitted across Bucky’s face. “And if he gives you any shit for it, point him out to me.”

Steve leaned forward and put his arms around Bucky, closing his eyes and burying his face in Bucky’s shoulder. And as Bucky hugged him, he began to think about just what he’d do.

A couple of days later, he stood leaning against a wall in the quadrangle. He’d gotten to the campus early on purpose and picked out a place he knew Arnie Roth needed to pass by to get to class, but out-of-the-way enough to keep things private. And once Arnie did pass by, they were going to have a little talk.

A few minutes later, Arnie appeared, satchel slung across his chest and a bottle of Coke in one hand. He pulled up when he noticed Steve standing there, a hesitant expression clear on his face.

“Hey, uh…” He pushed a hand through his mop of curly brown hair. “Hi, Steve. Hi.”

“Hi, Arnie.” Steve checked to make sure no one was paying attention, then gestured with his head towards a bench off to the side a ways down the quadrangle. “Come here, will you? We need to chat.”

Arnie sighed, but he did follow Steve to the bench. After a moment, he even sat down. “Look,” he started awkwardly, staring at the bottle of Coke in his hands. “About the other day -”

“Yeah, about that.” Steve cut him off with an upraised hand. He had no idea how to proceed, but something told him it was important for him to be the one leading the conversation, not Arnie. “I wasn’t, uh… really prepared for that.”

“Yeah.” Arnie kept his gaze fixed on the Coke. “Yeah, I could’ve… I could’ve approached it better myself.” He shook his head and looked at Steve. “I’m sorry. I didn’t meant to put you on the spot like that.”

Steve plowed ahead, talking over Arnie heedlessly. “I didn’t expect to see that there. The writing, I mean.” He had the feeling he wasn’t making a lot of sense. “I mean, I didn’t write it there…”

He couldn’t bring himself to blame it on Bucky. It would be so easy to just throw him to the wolves, to call him an idiot like he’d suggested and just play everything off that way. But that hadn’t ever been Steve’s way of doing things, and he wasn’t about to change now.

“And I’m not really in the habit of checking my sketches to make sure nobody’s been screwing with them, and -”

“And your fella wrote it there as a joke?” Arnie smiled weakly. Hesitantly. “Right?”

Steve looked at Arnie for a long moment, searching for anything in his face to indicate hostility, but finding nothing except… was that a twinge of unease on Arnie’s face?

“Right,” he finally said, nodding as he took the plunge. “He wrote it as a joke.” He gave a single snort of humorless laughter. “He’s got an oddball sense of humor, that’s for sure.”

Arnie was silent for a long moment. His gaze dropped back down the Coke and he turned the bottle over and over in his hands, the sunlight glinting off the glass. Finally he said, “My own fella… well… He knows better than to joke like that, but…” He looked up at Steve, a carefully neutral expression on his face. “But he thought Goldie winging the orange at me was pretty funny. He nearly died laughing.”

“Your… fella?” Steve’s eyes bulged at this news. How he managed to keep his voice down to a low whisper wasn’t clear to him as he reeled from the dizzying relief and astonishment. “Cripes, that’s a load off my mind.”

He felt his shoulders sag and his muscles relax as the full realization that his life and Bucky’s weren’t about to be destroyed hit home. But right on the heels of that realization came the understanding of just how huge an effort it must have taken for Arnie to make that kind of admission.

“So…” He smiled hesitantly. “We’ve only been together for a little while. Me and my fella, I mean. He’s been my best friend for a long time, but we didn’t start… well, you know, getting serious until pretty recently.”

Arnie returned the same small smile, but there was relief written clear on his face. “Michael and I have been together for two years. I live at home with my family. They don’t know, of course.” He shrugged awkwardly. “We were kinda hoping we could maybe get a place soon.” Another shrug. “I’m the oldest of eight kids. My parents should be glad for the room.”

“Two years?” Steve nodded. “Yeah, Bucky and I have been together for about a year and a half.” 

Of course, they’d started fooling around about three years ago, but it hadn’t turned serious until more recently. 

“We’re over at each other’s places all the time, but it’s just me and my ma over at my place, and my ma works a lot of late nights.”

Arnie nodded, and a beat passed in silence before he said, “Have you found others?” At Steve’s expression, he added, “Like us? Have you found others? Or is it just you and your fella?”

“I wouldn’t know where to look. Or what to say if I did.” He chuckled, almost sadly. “I’m a pretty prime candidate for getting the tar knocked out of me even without letting that little bit of information slip.”

Another moment of silence stretched between them, and then abruptly Arnie stood up. “If we don’t go to class now, we’re going to be late.”

Class went by in a blur, and the professor might have said something that was meant to be encouraging about his progress with the paintbrush, but Steve wasn’t paying enough attention to know. His mind was on what Arnie had confessed before class, and on what there still was to talk about after. And when the professor dismissed them, Steve made sure he stayed right on Arnie’s tail until they were out the door.

“Hey, Arnie.” Steve called out to him, having to jog a couple of steps to catch up. “Feel like a bite to eat? If there isn’t a good grab joint around, there’s always the H&H.”

“Grab joint?” Arnie looked at him. “What, are you from Brooklyn?”

“Born and raised.” Steve grinned with the pride he always felt in his hometown. “Red Hook, to be exact. How about you?”

“Orchard Street. Lower East Side.”

“Gotcha.” He nodded, beginning to feel something of a kinship with Arnie. They were both artists, both from equally low-rent places of Brooklyn and Manhattan, and both… well, Steve didn’t know any polite terms for guys that went with other guys, but they both did that. “So what do people on Orchard Street call a grab joint?”

Arnie smiled and shook his head. “A grease joint. And I don’t know any good ones around here. We’re about eight subway stops and a whole different stratosphere away from Orchard Street.” He shrugged. “But I’ve seen an H&H near the subway entrance.”

A sweaty ten minute walk brought them to the H&H automat. The place was clean and quiet, the lunch rush having ended and the dinner rush still at least an hour away. Steve got himself a chicken pot pie, Arnie chose an egg salad sandwich, and they both took a cup of coffee before seating themselves at a table by the window.

Far away from the ears of any of the staff.

“So.” Steve sweetened his coffee and stirred it. “I told you I didn’t know anybody else like us. What about you?”

Arnie was quiet for a moment, chewing on a big mouthful of sandwich. “My parents own an undergarment store,” he finally said, setting the sandwich down on his plate. “Brassieres, stockings, girdles. Ladies’ stuff.” He shrugged. “I grew up around it. I’m used to it.”

Steve nodded, chewing at a forkful of his chicken pot pie. “My ma’s a nurse. I grew up around some pretty wild stuff too.”

“I bet. Anyway, most of the customers are ladies, of course, but we used to have this one customer…” Arnie smiled faintly. “An elderly gentleman. He would come in every week for stockings, for girdles. My mother thought he was maybe shopping for an infirm wife, but no. He was a pansy performer.”

“A which?” Steve’s confusion was short lived though, as the obvious answer hit him like a hammer. His jaw nearly dropped, and his eyes widened. “Oh, wow. Those are for real?”

“They were.” Another shrug. “During the… they called it the ‘Pansy Craze’. They used to have these drag balls right in midtown Manhattan. People couldn’t get enough of them.”

“You mean our kind of people, right?” Steve was having a very hard time wrapping his head around the idea of an entire world that had apparently existed for however long under his nose without his even having the faintest clue it was there at all. “Guys who go with guys?”

“Guys who go with guys. Ladies who go with ladies.” Arnie picked up his sandwich, took a bite, and through a mouthful of egg salad, said, “People who go with both guys and ladies. All kinds.”

“You said they _were_ popular.” Steve took a sip of his coffee. He thought he knew the answer to the question he was about to ask, and it made him feel awful, but he still had to ask. “What happened?”

Arnie looked at him for a long moment. “Prohibition was repealed, and they didn’t need our kind of entertainment anymore.” He snorted. “I never got to go to a drag ball, but that elderly gentleman took pity on me. He would tell me stories when my parents weren’t in the store and he told me where I could find others like myself.” A small smile flitted across his mouth. “That’s how I met my first fella, and that’s how I met Michael, too.”

“Oh.” 

Steve stared into his coffee for a moment. He wondered what it would have been like to have somebody like Arnie’s elderly friend, someone who could show him and Bucky around this hidden world of people who couldn’t show their true natures in public, but who still lived their real lives behind the scenes.

“See, I envy that. All I’ve got is Bucky, and neither of us have ever really done any of that kind of exploring.”

Arnie reached into his satchel and pulled out a notebook and a pen. “There’s a place in the East Village, on Third Street by Avenue A.” He was writing as he talked, then he tore the page out and slid it across the table. “When you get there, ask for Fred and Ginger. And dress like you’re going on a date.”

Steve suddenly felt a thrill of excitement. “This feels like one of those pictures where they go up to a door with a peephole in it and say ‘Joe sent me’, and the lunker behind the door opens up and there’s a speakeasy on the other side.”

“Yeah.” Arnie grinned. “Yeah, that’s exactly what it is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Questions, comments, feedback, and discussions of 1930's LGBTQ history are warmly welcomed, encouraged, and hoped for!


	3. Fred and Ginger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I thought…” Bucky licked his lips. Sucked in his breath. “I thought this was your birthday present?”_
> 
> _“Well, I thought of a better one a few minutes ago.” Steve kept on moving his hips, feeling Bucky’s swollen cock against his ass and imagining what it would feel like to actually take it inside himself. The very thought made him so hard it hurt. “One that doesn’t cost anything, and one you’ll enjoy just as much as me.”_
> 
> _Bucky bit down on his lip for a moment, as if he were trying to gather himself. “You’re a tease,” he managed, fingers digging into Steve’s sides._

**Coney Island, Brooklyn**  
**Early July 1937**

“‘Fred and Ginger sent me’?” Bucky looked at Steve for a long moment. “Bullshit.”

“No, I swear to Christ.” Steve held up his hand as though he were taking an oath. “The God’s honest truth, Buck. Arnie says this place is full of guys like us.” His face brightened with enthusiasm. “Guys who like guys and girls both, that was what he said. And guys who just go for guys, and even girls who like girls. Can you beat that?”

“Yeah, I can beat that.” 

Bucky took an irritated swig of his beer. They were sitting on the beach at Coney Island after Steve had come barreling into the store, practically waving a sheet of paper over his head and going on about some pansy craze that had turned into a secret pansy bar. 

Something like that.

“By not walking into what sounds like a set up to get our asses beat.”

“Aw, come on, Buck.” Steve sounded pained. “Arnie’s got a fella himself. Why would he set us up like that if he’s the same way we are?”

Bucky sighed and stared stubbornly out at the ocean, refusing to meet Steve’s gaze. Because if he did, he knew exactly how the situation was going to end.

“I don’t know, Stevie.” He took another pull on the beer. “Why would he tell you this stuff at all when he hardly knows you?”

“Because of what you wrote in my sketchbook.” Steve gave him what was probably supposed to be his best attempt at a glare. “And because he probably recognized another guy in a tough spot and wanted to help him out. I’d do the same thing for anybody I came across who needed it, if I was in a position to help out. It’s just the right thing to do.”

Bucky said nothing.

“And it’s almost my birthday, too.” 

Bucky made the mistake of looking at Steve right then, and dear Lord, Steve was giving him doe eyes. He felt his resolve crumble away like sand.

God, he was a sap for that mouthy little punk.

“You want to go there on a date?” he finally said.

“Yeah,” Steve said with a sudden sappy smile of his own. “Yeah, let’s have a date.” He started gabbing rapidly. “We can dress up fancy, like we’re going out dancing, and then we can spend an evening out together at a place where nobody’ll think it’s odd. We can probably even dance together without anybody calling the cops. Come on, Bucky, what do you say?”

Bucky couldn’t help but smile back. His fella’s enthusiasm was contagious that way.

God, he loved him.

“Yeah, Stevie, okay.” He reached out and brushed a stray lock of hair off Steve’s forehead. “Let’s have a date.”

Two days later, he stood in the parlor of Steve’s house, dressed in his best suit, while Sarah Rogers looked both him and Steve over with a critical but loving eye.

“And you both have dates?” There was something hopeful in Mrs. Rogers’ voice. “Steve, too?”

“Yeah, of course.” Bucky smiled. “Steve’s not just tagging along.”

“But all the way in Manhattan?” She frowned, but only for a moment. “Seems kind of far for a date.”

Bucky shrugged. “But not as far as Steve’s school. And anyway, that’s where they live.”

Mrs. Rogers nodded. “What are their names?”

“Dorothy and Kathleen,” Bucky said easily. “Real lookers, the both of them. Dorothy-”

“Okay.” She held up a hand. “Okay, good. Please,” and she looked from Bucky to Steve, though her gaze settled back on Bucky, “please don’t let him get into any fights.”

“Aw, come on, Ma.” Steve sounded every bit as plaintive saying that to his ma as he usually did saying it to Bucky. “I never go looking for fights. You know I never do.”

Bucky exchanged a look with Mrs. Rogers, and over Steve’s annoyed “What?” they both rolled their eyes.

And then they were free to leave and out the door, and Steve practically vibrated with excitement for the entire hour’s journey to the East Village. As for Bucky, well, if the whole thing turned out to be real, he was pretty excited at the idea, too.

Soon they were walking up Avenue A. The evening July air was warm, but not oppressive, and the streets were busy with people going about their business.

Bucky slung an arm around Steve’s shoulders and pulled him close. They could do that much in public, and if the place they were going to checked out as real, maybe they could do a little bit more.

“Here it is,” Steve remarked, practically jumping up and down as they reached the Third Street address scrawled on Steve’s paper. “Now don’t forget the password. If they let both of us in at once, I’ll give it to them, but who knows? They might want us to go down and give it one at a time, and I don’t want you getting left out in the cold. So to speak.”

“I… what?” Bucky looked at him. “Just… just knock on the door, Stevie.”

Steve went up to the door and knocked, looking furtively over his shoulder like a private dick in one of those dime novels he liked to read. Except a peephole cover didn’t slide back to reveal a shady pair of eyes and a gruff voice demanding the password or else. 

Instead, a tall and very well-dressed gent came out and folded his hands in front of him with a serene smile. “Private club, gentlemen,” he said with a surprisingly deep and resonant voice.

It took Steve a moment to recover from what had to have been terrible disappointment at not actually getting to play a character in a pulp story, but he came back pretty well. “Uh, yeah,” he said after a moment. “That’s why we’re here.” He managed a conspiratorial smile anyway. “Fred and Ginger said we should drop by.”

“Well, in that case.” The man’s smile didn’t waver an inch as he stepped aside and held the door open for them. “Enjoy your evening.”

Bucky straightened his tie and walked through the door after Steve, and had a second to wonder just what, exactly, they were walking into before his eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room.

He wasn’t really sure what he had expected, but the place looked very much like any dim, smoky bar he had ever been in, only slightly more upscale, with comfortable chairs surrounding small tables, a small house band parked near a crowded dance floor, and plenty of people drinking and laughing and chatting and dancing.

Except that they were all men.

Men of every color and shape and size. There didn’t seem to be a single dame in the place, not even among the waitstaff. 

He looked at Steve and licked his lips. 

Well.

“Can you believe it, Buck?” Steve’s grin was practically incandescent. “Who’d have even thought there were places like this around here?”

Bucky hesitated a moment. They were on very new ground, and he suddenly felt like he was fifteen all over again, taking Birdie Toffanetti on a first date to the H&H. He felt jittery then, and he felt jittery now, only the stakes felt much higher and more important.

But Steve was standing there with an excited smile on his face, and Bucky was much better acquainted with him (in every possible way, including intimately, thank you very much) than he had been with Birdie at the time of their date. And this was the first time that he and Steve actually had the chance to go on a date - a real date, not just the two of them going to picture houses or to Coney Island like they had always done.

He shot a grin back at him and then reached out and grasped his hand. At the far end of the room, he spotted an empty table, and he led Steve through the crowd and even pulled out a chair for him.

No one paid them any mind.

“So.” He sat across from Steve and gave him a shaky smile. “How are we doing so far?”

“A little overwhelmed, actually.” Steve shook his head, still grinning ear to ear. “It’s a lot to take in, you know? A lot to process.” 

He looked around, his eyes lighting on the various couples in the place. There seemed to be a pretty big mix of ages, with guys ranging from their own age to Mr. Cicalese’s and everywhere in between.

“Are you going to want to dance?” Steve was now looking over at the dance floor, a nervous little smile on his face as he watched the couples move to the rhythm of the band. “‘Cause I really don’t know how.”

“Well, we’ll get a few-” Bucky immediately amended that. Steve was a goddamn lightweight. “We’ll get a single, solitary beer in you and go from there.”

“Hey.” Steve gave him an obviously put-on glower that was still more than half a smile. “I can drink more than one beer, you know.”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “Not if you want to remain standing for the rest of the night, you can’t.”

Banter was easy and familiar. That he could do with no problem.

“So you can hold me up.” Steve seemed to be considering that seriously. “Yeah, that might work out better, you know?” He grinned. “You can just hang onto my arms and sort of flop me around like a puppet, and nobody’ll be any the wiser. Maybe we’d even win the dance contest.” His eyebrows knit. “Is there a dance contest, even? Or… wait. Do they serve food here? Are we going to eat dinner or -”

“Let me buy you a drink,” Bucky said quickly. “You clearly need one.” 

Before Steve could do something suitably Steve-ish, Bucky got up out of his seat and headed over to the bar. And as he waited his turn, he couldn’t help but notice the other men seated around the bar - laughing, talking, some of them holding hands. A couple of them kissing.

It was a… well, he couldn’t think of any other word besides _relief._

A moment later, he returned to the table, a cocktail glass in each hand. “Hey, buddy, look what I got you.” He set one glass in front of Steve and reseated himself. “The bartender called it a French 75. It has gin and a little bit of bubbly in it.”

Steve picked up his glass and looked at it for a moment, then reached across the table with it to clink the edge of it against Bucky’s. 

“This night is already the greatest.” Steve fairly beamed, then took a sip of his drink and smacked his lips appreciatively after a moment’s consideration. “Mmm. Lemony.”

Bucky realized he was staring at Steve with a stupid, sappy smile on his face, so he quickly picked up his cocktail, reminded himself not to slam it back like a beer, and took a small drink. 

Yep. Lemony. And bubbly. And some other flavors he couldn’t name, but still tasted pretty good.

“It’s great, right?” The expression on Steve’s face made him look every bit as giddy as the champagne. “This whole place is great. We should have a look around once we finish the drinks. What do you say?”

“Sure, Stevie.” He was smiling that stupid smile again, but he couldn’t seem to keep it off his face. “Whatever you like.”

Steve took another sip of his drink - a bigger one this time - and then reached both hands across the table to take hold of Bucky’s. 

“You know something, Buck?” He gave a soft laugh. “I just realized it now. This is our first real date.”

Bucky resisted the urge to look around the room - he didn’t have to do that now - before entwining his fingers with Steve’s. “What, the fire escape didn’t count?” A breathless puff of laughter escaped his lips. “Or maybe the supply closet at school? That was the first time we kissed, after all.”

“I don’t think getting each other off in out-of-the-way places counts as having a date.” Steve gave him a wry look, but squeezed his hands. “I think you at least have to have dinner for it to be considered a date.”

“Then that monster pie I brought home the other day definitely counts.” Bucky licked his lips and smiled, and hoped he didn’t look at nervous as he felt. “It got you into my pants, after all.”

“It takes a whole lot less than that to make me want to get into your pants,” Steve responded with a grin that had more than a hint of lasciviousness. He didn’t seem nervous at all. “Or haven’t you been keeping track?”

“I’ve been keeping track,” Bucky murmured, and it struck him right then that they were actually having the conversation aloud. Without furtive glances over shoulders or through doorways. 

They were just talking and holding hands, like two regular people on a regular date, and that should have made him _less_ nervous, but instead only amplified it.

He wanted to get it _right_. They deserved that much. Steve deserved that much.

“So do you want dinner?” He rubbed small circles over Steve’s hands with the pads of his thumbs. “Will that make this a real date for you?”

“Yeah,” Steve responded with his eyes shining. He gave Bucky’s hands another squeeze. “Let’s take advantage of this and do everything. Dinner, dancing, the whole nine.” He smiled apologetically. “And I’m sorry in advance for the dancing; my shoes are probably going to spend more time on yours than on the dance floor.”

Bucky didn’t doubt it, but he also didn’t care. 

A moment later, he had flagged down a waiter. Luckily the menu offered a wide selection, including several options within their price range, and so they didn’t have to share a couple of deviled eggs like the poor chumps they were. They each ordered the chopped sirloin with French fries and peas, and though the place was busy, the service was quick.

“This is great,” remarked Steve with the same enormous grin as before. “We’re out on a real date. We’re dressed to the nines, drinking champagne cocktails and eating chopped steak and fries to musical accompaniment.” He laughed past the mouthful of sirloin he was chewing and beamed at Bucky. “Who’d have believed the two of us would wind up in such a classy place?”

“Well, we’re a couple of classy shmoes,” Bucky said, and tipped back the last of his cocktail. 

A few minutes later, the dishes were cleared, and Bucky stood, straightened his tie, and offered his hand out to Steve, beckoning with his other hand to the dance floor. “Shall we?”

\---

They danced.

Well, Bucky danced, anyway. Steve mostly stepped on Bucky’s feet while music played in the background. It might have resembled dancing, he supposed, to somebody who’d only ever heard of it and wasn’t looking too closely. At least he could blame it partially on the French 75, the last of which he’d downed in a pretty sizeable gulp right before heading down to the dance floor. Or he could try, he corrected himself; Bucky would see right through that.

Still, being on the dance floor had its benefits. He could hold Bucky close and put his head on Bucky’s shoulder, for one thing, and that was guaranteed to put a smile on his face. He could hardly believe that they were doing it - being out in public, holding onto each other on the dance floor of a dinner club, and looking at each other in a way that left no doubt as to how they felt about each other. 

They would have to come here again, he decided. This was something he couldn’t bring himself to give up doing now that he knew it could be done.

“I’m so glad we came here,” he murmured into Bucky’s ear as he laid his head on Bucky’s shoulder and smiled contentedly. 

He couldn’t get over how many different kinds of guys there seemed to be. There were old guys, young guys, and every age in between. Steve was surprised, but pleased, to see more than a few colored guys there as well. It seemed as though there wasn’t any kind of judgement there, and that made him happy in a way he could only describe as fiercely so.

Bucky winced slightly as Steve once again made contact with his feet, but there was still a smile in his voice as he murmured in Steve’s ear. “Yeah, I wish we had known about this place sooner.” His hand slid underneath the back of Steve’s jacket, his touch light over the thin fabric of his shirt, sending shivers skating up Steve’s spine.

“Mmmm,” Steve responded appreciatively, bringing his lips to Bucky’s ear and giving it a daring little nip. “I wish we’d known about a lot of things sooner.”

Bucky sucked in his breath and pulled Steve in a little closer. “Like what?”

“Like everything we do when we’ve got the place to ourselves all night.” Steve heard the salacious grin in his own voice and knew Bucky would hear it too. “Like what we did in the supply closet. How great would it have been to be able to do that years ago?”

“Well, we’ll just have to make up for lost time.” Bucky trailed his hand up and down the length of Steve’s back. “Won’t we?”

Steve shivered pleasurably at the touch of Bucky’s fingertips along his spine. It hinted at things to come, and reminded him of things they’d already done that he’d love to do again. “There isn’t enough time in the day to make up for all that lost time.” He chuckled softly and, suddenly bold, kissed Bucky on the side of the neck.

In front of everyone.

God, how amazing it felt to be able to do that.

Bucky sighed in what sounded like happy contentment and then looked down at Steve, a strange little smile quirking on his lips. “You know, I was about to do that.”

Steve looked back up at Bucky with a very self-satisfied smile, if he said so himself. “Then you should’ve.” He chuckled. “You snooze, you lose, Buck.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow. “That right?”

“That’s right.” Steve raised an eyebrow at him in what he hoped was a suggestive manner. “Looks like I beat you to it.”

“All right, fine,” Bucky said. “Beat this.” And then he slid his fingers under Steve’s chin, tilted his head upward, and kissed him full on the mouth.

In front of everyone.

Steve leaned into the kiss, his eyes closing almost involuntarily, his arms looping around Bucky to hold him as tightly as he could. And when he finally opened his eyes and drifted back as the kiss ended, he looked up at Bucky with simple adoration.

“Doesn’t it feel good?” He whispered it softly, never once breaking eye contact with Bucky. “Doing this in a place where we don’t have to worry about who might see us?”

“It feels good.” Bucky’s lips brushed against Steve’s forehead. “And strange.” His hand once again trailed down the length of Steve’s back, settling just above his waist. “Be nice if it were always like this.”

“Mmm.” Steve leaned back into the touch, letting Bucky’s hand support his waist. His head was humming a bit from the French 75, and he was feeling pretty light throughout his whole body. But more than that, it felt like he was seeing things in an entirely different way.

It wasn’t as though the people around them weren’t seeing them. A few eyes had landed on them while they were dancing, and Steve could see a couple of other patrons looking them over. It was more like there was nothing out of the ordinary to see when they looked at the two of them. There was no judgement in those looks, no spite or disgust. In this place, he and Bucky were just another couple out on a date for the evening.

And that was just fine by him.

The number the band was playing finished, and after a smattering of applause, the bandleader announced that they would be taking a short break. Which couldn’t have come at a better time, as Steve suddenly felt the drink knocking at his downstairs door.

“Be right back, Bucky,” he said with a smile, and he began edging his way through the crowd as they dispersed from the dance floor. He tugged at a waiter’s sleeve to ask where the john was, but the guy seemed to be in enough of a hurry that he only had time to indicate a rough direction before hustling off to the kitchen. And so Steve had to follow his nose.

He pushed open a likely-looking door that led to a short hallway. The sounds from the main room were muffled to a nearly mute level back there; it almost felt like he’d stepped outside the world for a moment. And naturally, there were no signs for the john, so he was left to just open doors at random. 

He opened a door at the end of the hallway and stopped short.

The room beyond was dimly lit by a couple of table lamps with red-violet diffusers over the bulbs. Arranged throughout the room were half a dozen mattresses on low-slung, battered bedsteads. And on every bed were a couple of guys in what amounted to pretty much every compromising position Steve could imagine - and one or two his imagination hadn’t been fruitful enough to come up with.

One guy, who looked like he was in his mid-thirties, had his head lolling back while his dark-haired partner sucked him. On another bed, a pair of heavyset middle-aged guys had their hands on each other’s cocks and looks of pure ecstasy on their faces. And on the bed closest to Steve, a young guy was on his elbows and knees while his older lover was - Steve couldn’t believe it - sliding his cock in and out of his ass. Actually _fucking_ his ass.

And from the looks on their faces, it was pure heaven for them both.

Steve quietly backed out of the room, his face beet-red, and closed the door as softly as he could. His heart hammered at his ribcage and his cock strained in his pants. He’d never even thought anyone could do a thing like that, but now that he knew it was possible, well…

He found the john on the next try and took a leak with some difficulty, and thought back to Bucky as he shook off and headed back out the door. He wasn’t going to believe it when Steve told him…

The hallway disoriented him again, and it took him a bit to figure out the way back to the main room. And once he was there, he had to take another moment to get his bearings. The band hadn’t started up again yet, and there was a lot of foot traffic going on. So much so that he seriously considered finding a chair to stand on so he could see which way he needed to go to get back to Bucky.

“Good evening.” A man with bright orange hair and a ruddy complexion to match was at Steve’s side suddenly. “I don’t think I’ve seen you here before.” He smiled. “First time?”

“Yeah,” Steve replied, a brief smile crossing his face. “It’s got to be obvious, right? I mean, from the fact that I can’t tell where I’m supposed to be heading. Took me a minute to find the john.”

The man chuckled. “It’s a maze the first time. Everyone gets lost at least once.” He smiled again, an easy, friendly smile. “I’m Rudy.”

“Steve.” He held out his hand for a shake, and Rudy clasped Steve’s hand with both of his. People certainly were friendly around here. He liked it. “I only found out about this place a couple of days ago. How long have you been coming here?”

“About six months, as long as the place has been open. The last place got shut down.” Rudy shrugged. “Well, you know how that goes, but the cops in this area are well paid, so…”

“Gotcha.” 

Steve couldn’t help but grin in a semi-conspiratorial sort of way; it felt like being in on an exciting secret. The fact that the police were apparently being bribed to look the other way while illegal things went on would have incensed him normally, but it turned out to be a very different story when the illegal things that were being done weren’t wrong. These guys weren’t hurting anyone; they weren’t running an extortion racket or a protection scam or bootlegging outfit - all they were trying to do was have a good time. And at the end of the day, what in the world was wrong with that?

“So…” Rudy hesitated a moment and took a breath. “Can I buy you a drink?”

“Uh…”

Steve was completely unprepared for that. For the first time in his life, he was being approached by someone who was interested in his company in a romantic way. And the double irony wasn’t lost on him: not only was it a guy who’d shown this interest and not a single one of the girls he’d ever hoped would have done so, but he was already spoken for.

“Sorry,” he said finally, with a sincerely apologetic smile. “The thing is, I’m here with somebody.”

Rudy blew out a breath and shook his head. “Well, no harm in asking. You have a nice night then.” He backed away, then turned and headed for the bar.

“Hey, Stevie.” Bucky came up alongside Steve then, putting an arm around his shoulders and pulling him in close. “I was looking for you.”

“Hey, Buck.” Steve grinned and leaned into the hug. “I was looking for the way back from the john, and then a very nice guy offered to buy me a drink.”

“I saw that.” Bucky nipped at Steve’s ear, a smile in his voice. “You ditching me for another fella then?”

“What? No!” Steve pulled back and looked Bucky square in the eyes. He’d been joking, Steve knew that, but this wasn’t something to joke about. “Never in a million years. Honest to God.”

“Really? Not a _million_ years?” Bucky pulled Steve close and led him through the crowd, searching for an empty table. “Not even for a guy who doesn’t leave stupid comments on your drawings?”

Steve gave him a dig in the ribs for that one, chuckling as he did. “Yeah, well, without the stupid comment, we’d never have found out about this place. So I guess I actually have to thank you for that.” He swiveled his head and gave Bucky a glare. “But that doesn’t mean you get free rein to do dumb things from now on.”

In reply, Bucky pecked him on the lips and grinned. “Oh no, not me. Dumb things? No, sir.”

“Yeah, see?” Steve returned the grin - or maybe it was more of a scowl - and reached down to give Bucky’s ass a good hard pinch. He was feeling pretty emboldened by this place, after all. If guys could fuck in the back room, then what harm was there in a bit of goosing?

Bucky’s eyebrows shot up into his hairline at that, but then he smiled even wider. “You need me to buy you another drink, Stevie? You’re getting fresh.” He steered them to a table in the corner and pulled out a chair. “I like it.”

“Really?” Steve grinned at him saucily, shouldered him into the seat, and sat right down on his lap, straddling him in full view of anyone who felt like looking their way. “How’s that for fresh?”

The fresher the better, as far as he was concerned.

Bucky laughed in breathless astonishment, his hands going to Steve’s waist. “We need to come back here. This can’t be a one-time event.”

“Not on your life.” Steve might have started squirming around a bit. Just a little bit, but more than enough to get Bucky’s attention. “If we could afford it, I’d want to be here every night.”

“Stevie.” Bucky inhaled sharply, his hands tightening around Steve’s waist. “Your ma isn’t working late tonight, remember? There’s no place to go after this.”

“But she’ll be working late in a couple days,” Steve whispered into Bucky’s ear as he continued to grind his ass against the hardening bulge in Bucky’s lap. “And besides, I wanted to tell you what I decided on for my birthday present.”

“I thought…” Bucky licked his lips. Sucked in his breath. “I thought this was your birthday present?”

“Well, I thought of a better one a few minutes ago.” Steve kept on moving his hips, feeling Bucky’s swollen cock against his ass and imagining what it would feel like to actually take it inside himself. The very thought made him so hard it hurt. “One that doesn’t cost anything, and one you’ll enjoy just as much as me.”

Bucky bit down on his lip for a moment, as if he were trying to gather himself. “You’re a tease,” he managed, fingers digging into Steve’s sides.

“A tease?” Steve grinned, rocking back and forth a little more slowly but bearing down a little bit more. “Why, because I didn’t tell you my idea yet?”

Bucky’s only response was a moan.

“Should I tell you what I want?” Steve had latched onto Bucky’s comment about teasing, and now he was going to do it in earnest. “Or do you want to guess?” He continued to undulate his hips as he whispered into Bucky’s ear, taking his earlobe into his mouth. “I’ll tell you when you’re getting warmer.”

“Things are going to get really warm, Steve,” Bucky muttered breathlessly, hands sliding down to grip the cheeks of Steve’s ass. “If you’re not careful.”

“Ooh.” Steve grinned and gave Bucky’s earlobe a sharp nip with his teeth. “Is that a fact? I thought I was supposed to be the talker.”

“I swear to God, Steve…” But whatever the threat was supposed to be, it spiraled away somewhere, leaving Bucky panting with need.

“You shouldn’t,” Steve replied, grinning a Cheshire Cat grin of pure self-satisfaction as he kept up the delicious friction. “It’s blasphemous.”

Bucky managed something like a glare, though the overall effect was dampened with the way he was kneading his fingers into Steve’s ass. “You’re a little punk, you know that?”

“Yup.” Steve let out a little ‘mmm’ of pleasure at the touch of Bucky’s hands on his ass and imagined them resting there when the both of them were naked. More preferably, when Steve was on his elbows and knees and Bucky was behind him the way the two guys in the back had been.

God, he was hard…

“And you’re a jerk.” He said it in a half-moan. “So I guess I’m just going to have to tell you what I want for my birthday.” He leaned in, a feverish glint in his eyes, and whispered into Bucky’s ear. “I want you to fuck me in the ass.”

Bucky made a sound that was somewhere between a gasp and a strangled moan. “Where…?” He swallowed. “Where did you get that idea?”

“I’ll tell you on my birthday,” Steve responded with another salacious grin. “You only have to wait two days, after all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you're enjoying the show so far! We're at the halfway point. Questions, comments, kudos, are feedback are all warmly welcomed, encouraged, and hoped for!


	4. Birthday Traditions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Bucky snorted into his beer, then reached out suddenly and put his arm around Steve’s shoulders, pulling him close. “No one offered to buy me a drink,” he whispered, breath hot in Steve’s ear. “And I wasn’t the one giving out lap dances.”_
> 
> _“Maybe not,” Steve murmured, tilting his head back and shivering with pleasure. “But you’re by far the better-looking one of us.” He chuckled. “I’d be jealous of me too.”_
> 
> _“Finish your beer,” Bucky breathed, fingers tightening on Steve’s shoulder. “I want to get you home.”_

**Coney Island, Brooklyn**  
**Early July 1937**

It was a long goddamn two days.

At some point, the night had to end, and Bucky and Steve made it back to Red Hook in one piece. (Thankfully, and so no explaining to Mrs. Rogers was needed.) Parting ways at the end of the night was difficult, and Bucky spent a long time laying in his bed and… _thinking_... about things.

He wished he and Steve could get their own place, where he could think about things with a lot more frequency (and company), but he couldn’t leave his ma and his sister, and Steve certainly couldn’t leave his ma on her own.

And so two long days passed, in which Bucky got up and went to work and let his imagination run away with him.

Finally, Steve’s birthday came around (and, oh yeah, it was a national holiday, too), and they observed their usual tradition of drinking beer on the beach at Coney Island while waiting for the fireworks. 

“Happy Birthday, buddy,” Bucky murmured, as the first of the fireworks exploded in the sky, bathing the beach in neon colors. He put an arm around Steve and leaned against him, waving up at the fireworks with his free hand. “Look what I got you.”

He couldn’t remember ever _not_ saying that on Steve’s birthday. It was tradition, along with drinking beer on the beach as they watched the fireworks. 

Steve chuckled as he leaned into the hug and slung an arm around Bucky’s waist in return. “Thanks, Buck. Dependability’s the best present in the world.”

“Hey, it’s hard work getting all of Brooklyn to go in on fireworks for you.” Bucky grinned. “But if anyone deserved to have their birthday declared a national holiday, it’s you.”

Steve groaned in mock frustration and took another pull at his beer. “You’re ridiculous.” The happiness in his voice was painfully obvious.

“And you’re a tease,” Bucky breathed into his ear. “What’s your point?”

“You’re the pointless one,” Steve shot back, though he did it with his eyes half-closed and in a breathy sort of way.

“Oh my god.” Bucky smirked. “You’re drunk already. On half a beer. Happy nineteenth birthday, you lightweight.”

“I’m not drunk.” Steve punctuated that declaration with another swig of beer, then turned to Bucky and smiled devilishly. “Just looking forward to my other present.”

Bucky looked at Steve for a long moment. “Oh, are you?” He took a long pull on his beer. “Well, who said there’s any other present?”

It was a good thing Steve’s ma was working all night. She always worked overnight on holidays. Double the pay, and God knew they needed the money.

Convenient for them, too.

“Are you going to hold out on me until I tell you where I got the idea?” Steve was still smiling like a cat about to swallow a canary. “Or did you just forget?”

Another burst of fireworks sizzled through the night sky in streaks of gold and red. There were a few murmured “ooh”’s and “aah”’s around the beach, and Bucky glanced around and saw that everyone was otherwise occupied with the festivities. 

He slid his hand across the sand and hooked his little finger around Steve’s. “I haven’t forgotten anything, Stevie.”

“So you want to hear where I got the idea from, then?” Steve gave Bucky’s little finger a tug with his own before continuing. “You wouldn’t believe what I came across in that club the other night, while I was looking for the john.” He leaned in closer to Bucky and whispered something so incredibly salacious, Bucky had a hard time believing it at all.

Except that Steve was a _terrible_ liar. So it had to be true.

“Our night might have gone very differently,” he murmured into Steve’s ear, the noise of the fireworks covering their words from any eavesdroppers, “had you showed me that room.”

Steve snorted with laughter. “I don’t know if I’m up for going at it in front of people, Buck. I prefer having the place to ourselves on the nights my ma works late.”

Bucky thought about it, then shrugged. “You’re probably right.” 

He drained off the last of his beer, plunked it in the cardboard carton, and pulled out a fresh bottle, uncapping it with a bottle opener he took from his pocket.

“Still…” He looked over at Steve, a grin spreading over his face. “With the way you were grinding on my lap, who’s to say you wouldn’t mind going at it in front of a room full of people?”

Steve grinned back a bit bashfully. “Well, I guess I must have gotten so caught up in the moment I got carried away and didn’t notice.”

Bucky licked his lips. “Well, I noticed.” He took a pull on the beer, with what must have been a stupid, sappy smile clear on his face. “And I’ll bet other guys noticed, too. Had we stuck around a bit longer, you might’ve had more guys offering to buy you a drink, and wouldn’t that have been nice?”

“It actually felt a bit weird, to tell you the truth.” Steve took another drink. “It was the first time anybody’s ever been interested in me like that.” He grinned over at Bucky. “Present company excluded. I didn’t know how to handle it. I hope I wasn’t rude to the guy.”

“Get you in that room,” Bucky murmured, his imagination beginning to create interesting images in his mind. “Let everyone watch. Maybe make ‘em all jealous.”

“Jealous of me, maybe.” Steve grinned. “Wondering how a scrawny little wisp of a guy like me managed to land your tall, dark, and handsome self.”

Bucky snorted into his beer, then reached out suddenly and put his arm around Steve’s shoulders, pulling him close. “No one offered to buy me a drink,” he whispered, breath hot in Steve’s ear. “And I wasn’t the one giving out lap dances.”

“Maybe not,” Steve murmured, tilting his head back and shivering with pleasure. “But you’re by far the better-looking one of us.” He chuckled. “I’d be jealous of me too.”

“Finish your beer,” Bucky breathed, fingers tightening on Steve’s shoulder. “I want to get you home.”

Only getting home seemed to take for-fucking-ever. Walking to the subway through slow moving crowds was an exercise in patience, the sixteen stop subway ride felt more like sixteen hundred stops, and then there were more milling crowds on the walk through Carroll Gardens into Red Hook.

He wished they could take a taxi, but who had that kind of money to throw around?

By the time they shut the door to Steve’s house, they were both sweaty and red-faced, shirts clinging to their bodies and hair damp and lanky. Bucky set the carton of beer on the kitchen table, grabbed a dishrag from the sink, and wiped his face down.

“Remind me to buy us a car one day.”

“Oh sure.” Steve snorted as he took a wet cloth to himself as well. “Have you got some kind of an in with Henry Ford that I don’t know about?”

“Oh yeah.” Bucky grinned. “He came into the store once. I made him an ice cream soda, and he offered me a job, but I didn’t want to move out to Detroit. You know how that goes.”

“Ah well.” Steve clicked his tongue in mock regret. “Can’t win ‘em all, I guess. Maybe Howard Hughes’ll stop by one day, and you can buy us an airplane instead.”

“Yeah, but where would I put the stupid thing?” He tossed the dishrag into the sink, then hooked a finger into Steve’s collar and pulled him over. “Come here, you.”

“Ooh.” Steve grinned broadly as he allowed himself to be hauled over. “You beast.”

Bucky raised his eyebrows. “I haven’t even gotten started, pal.” 

“So get started.” Steve waggled his own eyebrows suggestively. “I haven’t stopped thinking about my birthday present since I saw it.” He reached over with his hand and cupped Bucky’s crotch. “And I can’t wait to find out how it’s going to feel.”

“Mouthy _and_ demanding?” Both of Bucky’s hands ended up on Steve’s ass, fingers kneading the soft flesh under Steve’s trousers. “I like it. Show me more.”

“You show me.” Steve grinned lustily and started to undo Bucky’s pants. “I want to see what you’ve got to show me. See what I’m going to be taking in just a little while.”

“You must think I’m easy, pal, but you haven’t even bought me dinner.” Bucky smirked. “Or even a lap dance.”

“Good point.” Steve laughed and gave Bucky a light shove into the nearby chair, then straddled him just as he’d done in the club. He started grinding his hips again, and this time the front of Bucky’s pants was wide open. “So why don’t we pick up where we left off?”

“Why don’t we?” Bucky said a bit breathlessly, his hands resting on Steve’s waist.

They hadn’t even taken their shoes off, and yet Steve was trying to get him off. He swiveled his hips in circles, grinding his ass against Bucky’s rapidly-hardening cock and looking him right in the eyes as he did.

“Except here, we’ve got the place all to ourselves,” Steve whispered. “And there’s a bed right in the next room, and we can keep going all night.”

“You going to fuck me too?” Bucky sounded a lot more breathless and needy than he had intended, but with the way Steve was working him over, concentration was becoming difficult. “Is that what you want, Stevie?”

“Yeah,” Steve gasped, and he seemed to bear down a bit harder as he said it. “God, yeah, Buck. I want to fuck you too, and I want you to fuck me, and I want us both to keep going until we can’t get it up anymore for a week.”

God, he was too much. 

“I’m going to come right here,” Bucky groaned, as Steve continued to move tortuously on his lap. “Right here, if you’re not careful.”

“Hmm.” Steve didn’t sound concerned at all. In fact, he sounded like he was thoroughly enjoying himself. “I guess I’d better be careful, then.” He slowed down the grinding of his hips, but he managed to press himself even harder against Bucky’s cock. “I don’t want you to waste it, after all.” He leaned down and whispered into Bucky’s ear. “I want to feel you in me when you do it.”

Bucky nearly came in his pants right then and there.

“Okay.” He grasped Steve by the hips and lifted him bodily off his lap, then leaned forward and tried to steady his breathing. “Okay, give me a moment.”

“Wow.” Steve laughed softly. “I really got you going, didn’t I?”

Bucky glanced up at him and tried to scowl, but it didn’t land. “You’re a tease, you know that?”

“I keep on hearing that.” Steve grinned. “Maybe one of these days it’ll amount to something.”

A beat, then, “I should spank you.”

“You should.” Steve sauntered back over to the chair. “On my bare ass. And then you should rub some ointment into it afterwards.”

Bucky jumped out of the chair before Steve could climb back into his lap. “Oh no, no more of that. Not if you want to get me into the bedroom.”

“Then why are we still out here in the kitchen?” Steve reached out and took hold of Bucky’s shirt front, and tugged him along as he backed away towards the bedroom with a devilish smile on his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're almost to the finale! Hope you've been enjoying the ride. As always, questions, comments, feedback, and kudos are like chocolate for the soul. Sexy, sexy soul chocolate.


	5. Wonder Jelly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Steve let out a half-strangled laugh at that. “Now who’s the tease?”_
> 
> _“Oh, am I teasing?” Bucky said innocently, raising his eyebrows. “No, sir, not me.”_
> 
> _“I’m ready.” Steve groaned again, rocking his hips against Bucky’s hand, feeling Bucky’s Vaseline-covered fingers slide in deeper and imagining how wonderful it would feel to have Bucky’s cock in there instead. “I’m so ready, Buck, please…”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are! Grand finale! Enjoy.

**Red Hook, Brooklyn**  
**a moment later**

It was really going to happen, Steve thought giddily as he pulled Bucky into the bedroom. Not only were they going to get another wonderful night all to themselves and spend most of it bringing each other off over and over again, but they were going to get to experience something completely new besides. 

He shivered with anticipation as he imagined how it would feel when Bucky’s cock slid inside his ass for the first time. And he felt himself throb as he imagined how Bucky’s ass would feel as he pushed his own cock into it.

Enough thinking about it. Time to do it.

They both took a moment to hurriedly pull their shoes off and toss them aside. Then Steve reached out and began undoing Bucky’s shirt. “I’m so hard,” he whispered. “I can’t wait.”

Bucky slid the straps of Steve’s suspenders off his shoulders, one after the other. “Do we have any vaseline?”

“Yeah.” 

Steve reached over onto his bedside table for the jar he always kept there. He’d put it on his cracked lips in the wintertime, or over freshly-healed cuts to stop them from bleeding again, or inside his nose when it started bleeding, or a dozen other things. Recently, of course, he’d started putting some on his cock the mornings after Bucky spent the night to stop his pants from chafing his sore skin. And now, he’d found another use for it. 

The Wonder Jelly indeed.

He tugged Bucky’s suspenders out of the way, pulled off Bucky’s shirt, and tossed it aside. He didn’t want to wait anymore. The last couple of days had been torturous, trying to endure the wait as he was overcome by the thoughts and images his mind kept conjuring. But now, the wait was over.

He jumped up on Bucky suddenly, flinging his arms around his neck and his legs around his waist, and kissed him.

Bucky laughed in breathless astonishment and stumbled toward the bed, lowering Steve onto the mattress and crawling atop him. “I love you, Stevie,” he murmured, trailing a line of kisses from forehead to mouth. “You know that?”

“Yeah.” Steve looked up at Bucky with a blissful smile. “Yeah, I do. And I love you too.” He returned the kisses, as many of them as he could, and when Bucky’s lips reached his, he reached up and pulled Bucky’s face down to his to let the kiss linger.

The question _Why did it take us so long to get here?_ was on his mind, and it was one that he’d found himself wondering a lot over the past few months. Why, when they’d been best friends forever, hadn’t they taken this step a long time ago? And if they had, where might they be right then?

And yet, he couldn’t let those sorts of thoughts linger for too long. Because regardless of how long it might have taken them to get their act together, there they were. In bed together, kissing each other hungrily, and about to do something that might have been more intimate than anything they’d done so far. 

From that perspective, Steve found he didn’t really give a damn how long it had taken to happen. It was enough that it was happening.

“It’s going to get so hot in here,” Bucky murmured between kisses. “We might want to take a cold bath when we’re done.”

Bucky was right, and Steve knew it. They always seemed to work up a considerable sweat - more so now that the weather was warmer - and of course they couldn’t open the windows. A little stuffiness was infinitely preferable to somebody overhearing what was going on in there. Especially since there was usually a lot more noise than they really ought to have been making.

“Maybe,” Steve replied, kissing Bucky back hungrily and taking Bucky’s lower lip between his teeth. “By the time we’re done, though, we might just be too exhausted.”

Bucky pulled away abruptly and yanked his sweat-soaked undershirt off, flinging it into a corner of the room. He skinned his pants down and kicked them aside, did the same with his shorts, and then there he was, naked and erect as a tentpole.

“It’s too damn hot to roll around in clothing,” he offered by way of explanation, then climbed onto the bed and leaned back, propping himself up on his elbows. “Your turn. Make it good.”

Steve responded with a lascivious grin as he sprang to his feet, keeping his eyes on Bucky the whole time. He’d been about to simply strip down as fast as he could and toss his clothing haphazardly wherever it might have fallen, but Bucky had told him to make it good. And he wasn’t about to disappoint.

He unbuttoned his shirt, pulling it open as he did, and then shrugged his shoulders. The shirt slid off of him, down his arms to land on the floor. Then he peeled off his undershirt, tossing it up into the air with a careless grin. It landed somewhere behind him.

With his suspenders and shoes gone, his pants practically fell down by themselves. And then all that was left were his shorts. So he turned his back to Bucky, hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his shorts, and slowly - very slowly - slid them down until he could kick them aside with a flick of his foot.

He kept his back turned and looked back over his shoulder at Bucky. “How was that?”

Bucky was looking back at Steve with a bright smile clear on his face. He crooked a finger at Steve, beckoning him back to the bed. “Come here, you.”

Steve grinned and turned around, his erection obvious and twitching, and wasted no time heading over to the bed. In fact, he crawled right on top of Bucky and pressed his whole length against him. The sensation, as always, made him groan with delight.

“God, Bucky, this feels so good.” He bent his head down to kiss Bucky again. “ _You_ feel so good.”

“You going to be saying that when we’re old and gray, Stevie?” Bucky wrapped his arms around Steve’s bony shoulders and pulled him in closer. “And probably can’t get it up anymore?”

“Speak for yourself,” Steve shot back with a grin and a thrust of his hips. Bucky’s cock throbbed against his own and it felt so good, _so good_ that he couldn’t stifle another moan, and Bucky didn’t even bother trying to quiet his own groan of pleasure. “What’d be the point of anything if I couldn’t get it up anymore?”

“You’re fresh.” Bucky grinned, his hands traveling from Steve’s shoulders and down his back, until he was clenching an ass cheek in each hand. “It’s always the scrappy little guys, isn’t it?”

“Depends,” Steve replied, his grin broadening along with his sense of self-satisfaction. “How many scrappy little guys have you had the opportunity to get fresh with?”

“One.” Bucky rolled over suddenly, so that Steve was beneath him on the bed. He smiled down at him, then dropped a lingering kiss on his lips. “But I only need the one.”

Steve looked up at Bucky with nothing short of adoration on his face and in his heart. “You’re the greatest, Buck.”

And he didn’t want to spend one more minute thinking about how he’d gotten so lucky, so he reached up and kissed Bucky for all he was worth. He caressed every inch of Bucky that he could reach - his back, his shoulders, the back of his neck where the short hairs from his last haircut had grown out an inch or so, the dip at the small of his back that swelled out into his ass…

They had already worked up a delicious, slippery sweat when Bucky reached for the glass jar of Vaseline on the bedside table. Steve’s breath caught in his throat as Bucky unscrewed the cap and dipped two fingers into the jar, coming away coated in petroleum jelly.

They really were going to do it.

Bucky leaned down and kissed Steve softly on the mouth, his jelly-slicked fingers beginning to push gently but insistently against Steve’s entrance. 

“All right, Stevie,” he murmured around Steve’s lips, one finger sliding slowly inside of him. “Tell me how it feels.”

It felt… indescribable. He had to fight down the sudden feeling of fullness, but it passed quickly. And in its wake was a strange new feeling of being explored in a way he’d never imagined. Bucky’s finger curled and probed inside him, making him gasp and occasionally writhe against him.

“Another one,” Steve breathed, and closed his eyes to wait for it. “Put another one in. Please…”

Bucky eased a second finger inside of him, stretching Steve wider, and then gently began moving his fingers back and forth.

“You like it?” he murmured, his free hand carding through damp locks of Steve’s hair. “Want me to keep going?”

Steve wasn’t sure he could form coherent words. Bucky’s fingers were stretching him wide, bringing a torturously pleasurable burning sensation to his ass that made him unbelievably hard. And with Bucky’s cock still pressed against his own, he was teetering on the edge of delirium.

“Yes,” he managed in a gasp. “Oh God please keep going.”

Bucky probed at his ass with a third fingertip, and Steve almost lost it right then and there. The drawn-out groan that escaped from his mouth as that third finger squeezed its way into his already stretched ass was one of guttural pleasure. And if he could take three of Bucky’s fingers, Steve thought with wild abandon, he could certainly take Bucky’s cock.

“I want it, Buck,” he moaned, eyes half-closed. “Do it. Give it to me now.”

Bucky chuckled softly, though he didn’t stop moving his fingers. “Thought I already was giving it to you?” He smiled down at Steve and pressed another kiss to his mouth. “What have we been doing all this time?”

Steve let out a half-strangled laugh at that. “Now who’s the tease?”

“Oh, am I teasing?” Bucky said innocently, raising his eyebrows. “No, sir, not me.”

“I’m ready.” Steve groaned again, rocking his hips against Bucky’s hand, feeling Bucky’s Vaseline-covered fingers slide in deeper and imagining how wonderful it would feel to have Bucky’s cock in there instead. “I’m so ready, Buck, please…” 

In response, Bucky carefully eased his fingers out, and Steve felt oddly empty and bereft, nearly moaning with frustration and _need._

“How do you want it, Stevie?” Bucky murmured against Steve’s mouth, grinding his cock - already slick with fluid - against Steve’s own aching hardness. “Tell me how you want it.”

“Fuck me,” Steve moaned, aching to be filled again. He opened his eyes, looked right into Bucky’s, and let his thoughts become words. “Put your cock in my ass, Buck.”

“Tell me how you want it,” Bucky repeated, rocking his hips maddeningly, their bodies pressed together, hot with desire and sweat. “You have to tell me.”

“God damn it, Bucky…” Steve’s voice came out half-strangled with need. If he’d been strong enough, he thought desperately, he’d have simply rolled Bucky over onto his back and pounced on him eagerly. But…

Wait a minute.

“Lie down on your back,” he said with a sudden sly smile. “That’s what I want.”

Bucky looked at him for a long moment, a grin spreading over his face. “You’re the boss,” he said, and then did exactly as Steve had directed. And Steve, every nerve ending in his body quivering and every part of his mind doing very much the same, swung a leg over Bucky and straddled him. 

This was it. They were really going to do it.

He reached over to the bedside table for the jar of Vaseline, scooping out a fingerful and reaching down to slather it generously over Bucky’s cock. His heart was juddering against the inside of his ribs as if it were trying to batter its way out, and he felt himself shivering with nerves and desire. His cock twitched, a clear rivulet beading at the tip and running its way down.

He eased up on his knees. Reached back to take hold of Bucky’s cock and position it where he needed it to go. Slowly lowered himself down, willing his muscles back there to relax. And after a long moment of discomfort, suddenly felt the head of Bucky’s cock pop inside.

Bucky let out a long breath that turned into a moan, and he seemed to be holding himself very, very still. 

“Oh my God, Buck.” Steve’s eyes were half-closed, but he could still see the look on Bucky’s face as he held himself there, feeling a million things at once. “God, this feels…”

“Incredible?” Bucky whispered, hands going to Steve’s waist and hips rocking gently upward, burying more of his cock inside of Steve. 

“Even better than that.” A gasp escaped Steve’s mouth as Bucky pushed upwards, and he bore down to meet Bucky, gasping again at the fullness he felt. “How does it feel to you?”

Bucky gave him a tremulous grin. “You feel so good, Stevie.” His hands shook, but he didn’t stop moving his hips, finding a gentle rhythm as he thrust his slickened cock slowly and tortuously inside of Steve. “You feel so good. I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

Every single movement Bucky made tore another gasp from Steve. He couldn’t think anymore; he could only feel. And what he was feeling was too good for words.

He rocked his hips back and forth, up and down, and Bucky’s cock, thick and throbbing inside him, seemed to touch something that sent erotic jolts through his whole body. His cock jumped and twitched, and it would be a miracle if he didn’t start spurting uncontrollably in a second or two…

“Don’t stop, Buck.” He heard the words, but only distantly realized he was saying them. “God, keep going…!”

“Shh,” Bucky managed, but he was panting, fingers digging almost painfully into Steve’s sides. “You have to… you have to be quiet…” He moved his hips faster now, thrusting up into Steve deeper. Harder. “Don’t want… neighbors… have to be quiet.”

Steve clamped down on another moan as Bucky’s cock hit that place inside him again. And it was all too much, he couldn’t hold back anymore, and it felt too incredible to deny himself any longer.

He came hard, his cock jerking and spurting without even being touched. And it was more intense than he’d ever felt before.

Bucky let out a gasp that was both breathless astonishment and laughter, and he drove himself into Steve harder and harder, the both of them sweating and panting with exertion and need. 

“Stevie,” he breathed, the name turning into a desperate moan on his lips. His fingers clutched at Steve’s waist. “Stevie, oh god, Stevie.”

His eyes went wide suddenly and he bit down on his lip and drove himself hard into Steve with one final thrust. And Steve, still in the end throes of his own pleasure, suddenly felt the unbelievable sensation of Bucky’s cum spurting into him, hot and thick and endless.

His own cock gave a final jump as one last pulse came out and joined the pool on Bucky’s stomach. And then he went limp, gasping for breath with his heart beating a tattoo against the inside of his chest. 

“Holy God, Bucky,” was all he could manage, as Bucky wrapped his arms around him and drew him in close, and for a long moment, they both lay there, breathing heavily in a sweat soaked haze.

“Hey,” Bucky said softly, once the rise and fall of his chest had steadied into a gentle rhythm. “Bet we steamed the windows up.”

Steve gave a little burst of breathless laughter as he tried to get his breathing under control. “Bet you’re right.” He lifted his head a bit to look up at Bucky. “But I don’t feel like getting up to check.”

Bucky carded his fingers through Steve’s damp hair. “Nah. You’d have to open the curtains anyway, and I don’t want any meddlesome matties catching a look at you.”

Steve chuckled softly. “You want me all to yourself, huh?”

Or maybe, Steve thought with a burst of frustrated irritation, he was just afraid of what would happen if anybody got a look into the room and saw what two naked guys had obviously been getting up to. Not every place was as open and understanding as the club they’d been to the other night, after all, and he knew exactly what he and Bucky could expect if somebody caught a glimpse of their real relationship.

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. And yet it was the way things were, and so they had to put up with it no matter how badly they might have chafed at it. Because the alternative was to have both their lives ruined, and while Steve might not have given a damn about what people said or thought about him, he cared an awful lot about what happened to Bucky.

Bucky brought him back to the present with a murmured, “Yeah, I want you all to myself.” A satisfied smile drifted across his face. “Except when guys are offering to buy you drinks in bars. I could watch that all night.”

Steve chuckled again, remembering Rudy and the fact that no one had ever offered to buy him a drink before that. Or even accompany him out for one except as part of one of his and Bucky’s perpetually ill-fated double dates. It was certainly puzzling, but somehow gratifying as well. Especially since Bucky clearly didn’t mind, and actually seemed to find it pleasing.

“How come you like that idea so much?”

“Why shouldn’t I like it?” Bucky dropped a lazy kiss onto Steve’s forehead. “Why shouldn’t I like seeing guys offer to buy you a drink, knowing I’m the one who gets to bring you home?”

Steve smiled broadly, feeling a self-satisfaction like he’d never known before. Bucky liked showing him off, he realized, like any other guy might enjoy showing off the classy looker of a dame he had on his arm. And while Steve knew he wasn’t much to look at, and that he was every bit as low-class as every other shlub from Brooklyn, it pleased him to no end that Bucky liked him enough to feel happy about being the one to go home with him.

Go home and fuck him, he thought with a lewd smile, and clenched up his ass around Bucky’s softening cock, which had been threatening to slip out.

Bucky inhaled sharply, then offered Steve a wobbly smile. “You ready to go again, Stevie?”

“After all this time, do you even have to ask?” Steve grinned and squeezed again. His own cock was getting hard again, and he flexed it slightly against Bucky’s stomach. “But how about we change places this time?”

Bucky rolled over suddenly, so that Steve was beneath him on the mattress. Unfortunately that meant his cock slipped out, leaving Steve feeling strangely bereft.

“I worked up an appetite with all that activity.” Bucky grinned down at him. “What’s in the icebox?”

“Probably some casserole.” Steve returned the grin. “But what activity are you talking about? I did all the work and you just laid there.” 

God, he loved him.

Bucky rolled his eyes. “You’re a punk,” he said without heat, then abruptly pushed off the mattress, toweled himself off with a discarded undershirt, and walked bare ass naked from the room. “I’m going to see what’s in the icebox.”

Steve could hear Bucky rummaging around in the kitchen, and then a moment later, he walked back in, carton of beer in one hand and the remains of a ham, bacon, and cheese casserole in the other. He seated himself on the bed, put the casserole and the beer between them, and passed Steve a spoon.

“You plan to keep me going all night, you know you have to feed me.” And without waiting for a reply, Bucky dug into the casserole.

“You’re incredible,” Steve laughed, disdaining the spoon and shaking his head as he reached for a beer. He popped it open with the bottle opener, which he tucked back into the carton where he’d found it. “You’re a machine that eats. How the hell do you eat so much?”

“I’m a growing boy,” Bucky said around a mouthful of casserole. “And I worked up a sweat.”

“Again with the sweat.” Steve swigged at the beer, smirking at Bucky. “All you did was lie there. I _earned_ my sweat.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Bucky didn’t even look up from his dinner. “Open me a beer, would you?”

“Unbelievable.” Steve threw up his hands in mock outrage, smiling all the while. “Again I’m doing all the work.” He cracked open a bottle and passed it over. “Want me to drink it for you too?”

Bucky snorted and took a long pull on the beer. “No, pal, I absolutely do not want you to drink it for me. Not if we plan to do anything else this evening.”

“Oh, we plan on it.” Steve grinned lasciviously and crawled over to kiss Bucky on the side of the neck and whisper in his ear. “And I plan on giving you the ride you just got through giving me.”

Bucky actually shivered at that, and Steve ran his tongue over Bucky’s earlobe. He could taste the salty tang of Bucky’s sweat, and it made him want more. Made him want to start working Bucky up like Bucky had done to him before. With his fingers first, one after the other, until Bucky was ready, and then…

“You’d better get your vitamins,” he said with a grin as he nipped at Bucky’s ear. “Enough to keep you going all night long.”

Bucky sucked in his breath, spoon lying forgotten in the casserole dish. “You’re not going to let me finish dinner, are you?”

“Who’s stopping you?” Steve breathed into Bucky’s ear again, his hand wandering over towards Bucky’s leg. Coming to rest on Bucky’s thigh, and sliding up towards his groin. “Go ahead and eat.”

Bucky glanced at him. “You’re making it hard.” Abruptly his eyes widened and he shook his head, a smile playing on his lips. “To eat, I mean. You’re making it hard to eat.”

Steve felt a thrill run through him at Bucky’s slightly flustered reaction, and naturally had to keep on going. He couldn’t resist.

“Yeah, I can tell how hard it is.” He caressed the tip of Bucky’s cock with his thumb, spreading the slippery bead he found all over the head and smiling up at Bucky devilishly. “To eat.”

“You’re a tease.” Bucky exhaled slowly and closed his eyes. “You know that?”

“Hmmm.” Steve’s grin broadened, and he began slowly dragging his fingertips up and down the underside of Bucky’s shaft. “Seems like some guy keeps on telling me that, but I can’t for the life of me remember his name.”

“Yeah, you’re making it hard.” Bucky cracked a smile. “To remember names.” He seemed torn between taking another swig of beer or lying back on the bed, gaze darting from beer bottle to mattress. In the end, he did neither, and let Steve continue to stroke him.

“It is pretty hard,” Steve agreed, wrapping his fingers around Bucky’s cock and giving it a single firm, slow stroke from the base all the way up to the head. “To remember what we were talking about a second ago.”

Bucky let out a sigh that trailed off into a moan, and Steve grinned at his handiwork. He reluctantly let go of Bucky’s cock in order to pick up the casserole and the beer and relocate them to the floor - after all, he didn’t want them to get knocked over during the next round - and then went right back to work on Bucky’s cock, but this time with both hands.

“So what do you say, Buck?” Steve looked up at him hungrily. “Feel like switching places this time?”

“Oh yeah,” Bucky breathed. “You promised anyway. Promised you were going to do to me exactly what I did to you.”

“A different way, though.” Steve’s heart jittered wildly as he thought about it. His cock did pretty much the same. “Like the way I saw in that club.” He swallowed, his mouth and throat dry. “I want you on your knees and elbows, with me behind you.”

Bucky gave him a long, smoldering look, and then very quietly said, “You going to get me ready for you, Stevie?”

Steve laughed breathlessly, reaching over for the jar of Vaseline. “I’ll get us both ready.” He scooped out a double fingerful of the jelly and looked at Bucky with hungry anticipation. “Go on, Bucky. Get on your knees.”

Another long look before Bucky did just that, wrapping a hand around one of the bars on the old iron headboard. And then there he was, on his knees and breathing steadily, ready for Steve to do whatever he liked.

Steve had never seen anything so erotic in his life.

He came forward on his own knees, his cock bobbing rigidly out in front of him as the mattress bounced, and reached out to slide his fingers between Bucky’s asscheeks, spreading the Vaseline around the pucker of Bucky’s ass. He felt the muscle tighten as his fingers encountered it, and he spent a long moment just running his fingertips around and around in a small circle, massaging the Vaseline into Bucky’s ass. And he began to push, just a little bit at first, but then more and more, feeling Bucky’s rim begin to relax bit by bit, until the tip of his middle finger suddenly slipped inside.

Bucky gasped. So did Steve.

“How is it, Buck?” he asked, his voice a throaty whisper and his fingers still moving. “Do you like it?”

Bucky blew out a jittery breath. “Yeah. Yeah, keep going.”

And Steve did. It felt incredible, the length of his finger sliding knuckle by knuckle into Bucky’s clenching rim. There was a slippery, smooth-walled tunnel beyond it, its surface yielding to his gentle pressure, and when he crooked his finger slightly, Bucky let out another gasping moan. And after a few moments’ time, feeling the tight ring of muscle relax again around his finger, he slid in his index finger as well. Made a few scissoring come-hither motions and watched and listened to Bucky’s reactions. And reached around with his other hand to wrap his fingers around Bucky’s cock and work on him with long, slow, hard strokes.

He was ready, so ready to find out how it would feel.

“I’m gonna do it, Buck,” he whispered as he withdrew his fingers and, shivering with desire, slathered a bit more Vaseline onto his own cock. “I’m going to put it in.”

“You’re going to ‘put it in’?” Bucky snorted, but he was trembling slightly all the same. “You learn your dirty talk in grade school, Stevie?”

Steve laughed, the jittering tension broken. “You’re such an asshole.”

“Well, go ahead, Stevie.” Bucky turned his head and looked at him. “Put it in.”

Scowling playfully, Steve placed the head of his cock against the pucker between Bucky’s asscheeks. “I said I was going to.”

He pushed.

There was resistance at first, despite the Vaseline and the warming-up Steve had done with his fingers. But he felt Bucky’s ass begin to yield bit by bit, and suddenly, without warning, the head of his cock popped inside.

Bucky gasped loudly enough that, for a moment, Steve wondered if the neighbors might have heard him.

“Keep going,” he said shakily. “Don’t stop.”

“Okay,” Steve responded just as shakily, his hand still on Bucky’s cock, and he eased his hips forward a bit more.

It was incredible, the feeling of it. A ring of intense pressure, squeezing his cock tighter than he himself ever did, and an unbelievable soft, smooth, slippery heat beyond it. Bucky’s ass clenched around his cock as he pushed deeper, an inch at a time, breathing raggedly, until finally he felt Bucky’s ass against his own hips.

“I did it, Buck,” he panted, his fingers almost reflexively tightening around Bucky’s cock. “God, it feels incredible.”

Bucky, head bent and hand gripping the bar of the headboard tightly, just managed a whispered, “Keep going. I want to feel you.”

“Can’t you feel me now?” He heard the smile in his own voice as he teased Bucky, loosening his grip on Bucky’s cock to heighten the effect. Bucky nearly whimpered in response. “I can sure feel you.”

“I can feel you,” he moaned. “I can feel you. Keep going.”

“Tell me, Bucky.” Steve bent forward, his stomach and chest against Bucky’s back, until he could whisper in Bucky’s ear. He flexed his cock inside Bucky’s ass for emphasis, dragging another moan out of him. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

“I told you.” Bucky’s whole body trembled with need and desire. Steve smiled to himself - he was obviously doing his job well. “Keep going.”

“I can’t.” Steve pushed his hips forward again, his cock remaining lodged inside Bucky’s ass. “That’s as far as it’ll go.” He brought his voice back down to a whisper. “So be specific. Tell me what you want me to do.”

A breathless puff of astonished laughter mixed with urgency escaped Bucky’s lips. “You’re such a little shit, you know that?”

“I had no idea.” Steve grinned and gave Bucky’s cock another stroke, and Bucky clenched up around him suddenly. He gasped at the sudden pressure and rocked his hips forward again, trying to bury himself deeper inside Bucky even if it wasn’t possible. “But you’re still not answering me.”

“Fuck me, Steve.” Bucky sounded desperate. Needy. His hand shook around the bar of the headboard.“I want you to fuck me.”

Steve nearly came right then.

“You mean like this?” He pulled back, feeling his cock begin to slide free of Bucky’s tightly clasping ass until only the head was left inside. And then, he pushed forward again. This time he slid in the whole way without any resistance at all, and he gasped at the sensation. 

Again. And again. And again, slightly faster every time.

“Is this what you wanted?”

“Yes,” Bucky cried, far too loudly, his whole body shaking with desire, the knuckles of his hand turning white around the bar of the headboard. “Don’t… don’t stop.”

“I couldn’t if I tried,” Steve gasped as he rocked his hips forward again and stroked Bucky’s cock at the same time. “I don’t want to stop.” He quickened his thrusts, almost delirious with how incredibly good it felt, and it didn’t take long before he reached a point where he couldn’t have stopped if his life depended on it.

“I’m gonna come, Bucky,” he gasped, his hand a blur on Bucky’s cock and his hips lunging back and forth almost of their own accord. “Jesus, I’m gonna…!”

He thrust again, one last time, trying to force his hips forward and bury as much of his cock inside Bucky as he could, even when he didn’t have any more to bury. He stroked Bucky’s cock again, feeling it throb and pulse and twitch in his hand, and when he felt the hot thick slipperiness of Bucky’s come fill the palm of his hand and heard his desperate cry of pleasure, he lost it entirely. 

He came in scalding bursts, long and hard and spurting again and again into the warm slick depths of Bucky’s ass, and it felt like he’d never stop coming.

Until he did, and then all the strength he had left him all at once, and he slumped and sagged forward with a handful of Bucky’s jism, no air in his lungs, and an exhausted but triumphant smile on his face.

Bucky collapsed against the mattress, and for a long moment, neither of them did much more than catch their breaths. Finally Bucky shifted around onto his back and gathered Steve against him.

“Okay,” he said breathlessly. “Okay, so… so that was great.”

“Yeah.” Steve smiled wheezily up at Bucky as the feeling slowly came back to him. “About the greatest thing ever.” He grinned. “We should do that a lot more often.”

Bucky managed a single snort of laughter. “Oh yeah.” He dropped a kiss on Steve’s forehead. “Yeah, I know what the next few weeks are looking like.”

“Mmmm.” Steve wriggled his body closer to Bucky’s, smiling contentedly and pressing his lips against Bucky’s chest for a kiss. “Is that a prediction or a promise?” He laughed softly. “Either way, I’ll be happy.”

“It’s a prediction and a promise.” Bucky tousled Steve’s sweaty hair, then made a face. “God, we’re a mess. Let’s get that tub filled up, Stevie. There’s no way we’re going to sleep like this.”

Steve chuckled again and reluctantly hauled himself up into a sitting position. He wiped his sticky hand on his discarded undershirt, then tossed it into the hamper. And as he got up, still naked, and followed Bucky into the kitchen, he thought for the thousandth time that he was the luckiest mug in Brooklyn. Maybe in the world.

Life was good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you've enjoyed reading as much as I've enjoyed writing. Let me know what you think. What do you see happening in the next installment of this series? What would you love to see happen next?
> 
> As always, questions, comments, feedback, kudos, and all that goodness are warmly welcomed, eagerly hoped for, and greatly appreciated.


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